Environmental and financial advocacy teams from coal-producing elements of the nation unveiled a coverage agenda on Monday to assist coal-reliant communities make a transition to a extra sustainable future.
The plan contains objects which have lengthy been on the want checklist for teams like Appalachian Voices and the Simply Transition Fund, each of which had been concerned in drafting the plan. Objects embody creating jobs in coal-mine reclamation and investing federal {dollars} in infrastructure enhancements.
The plan, which drafters are calling the National Economic Transition Platform, focuses on the wants of coal-reliant communities throughout the nation, drawing connections between the challenges confronted in West Virginia and Appalachian Kentucky to these confronted within the Navajo Nation a whole lot of miles away.
“The employees within the communities that gave probably the most to energy our nation within the final century needs to be among the many first to profit from and to create the brand new economic system that’s rising within the 21st century,” mentioned Adam Wells, the Regional Director of Group and Financial Growth for Appalachian Voices.
Wells mentioned the wants of coal-reliant communities are so excessive that coordinated federal intervention is important. “If we would like the communities the place we dwell to proceed to be good locations to dwell, there has obtained to be a disciplined and considerate, bottom-up intervention that occurs to carry our economic system and our social help techniques into the 21st century,” Wells mentioned. “And so failure shouldn’t be an possibility right here.”
Wells and others concerned within the plan hope to current the plan to lawmakers and candidates in any respect ranges of presidency, each to carry them accountable to coal communities and within the hopes that lawmakers would flip the plan into laws within the coming years.
